ricardienne | A little story for you all

I really seem to be unwilling to do work these days, and am instead poking through the old things on googlebooks in search of references to my obscure Roman people: here is a strange little story about a haunted piece of parchment, which brings tragic death to various people...

THE PROFESSOR AND THE PALIMPSEST

BY CAROL WIGHT
(The Atlantic Monthly vol. 130 (1922):805-809)

Centuries ago, there was a piece of parchment in a little booth in a blind alley at Rome, kept by a Carthaginian named Mythymbal. A Roman knight passing by bought the parchment, because he was a poet and thought it would be just the right size for an elegy. Renowned rather as an artist than as a shopkeeper, Mythymbal took real pleasure in painting the name of the knight, Cornelius Gallus, at the top of the parchment. On completing his task, he handed the parchment to the knight, saying, —

'This parchment is under the spell of a Thessalian. Before you use it, sacrifice a cock, but do not sacrifice yourself.'

The knight laughed genially, for his own name signified the 'Cock,' and to him the joke was no new one; but — he forgot the warning; and far away from Rome, and under the black cloud of the Emperor's displeasure, he wrote an elegy on the parchment, lamenting in sad and solemn words the disgrace that had befallen him, and the death that was to vindicate his memory. Hesealed the parchment with his seal, and sent it by his trusted freedman to his dearest friend at Rome. Then he fell on his sword and, as the blood gushed forth, he passed from one dream to another, till his life and his disgrace were ended.

His friend, Vergil, wept as he read the parchment, but even his tears were of no avail. He had to destroy the verses he had written on his fellow poet; for the word went forth that Cornelius Gallus was to be blotted out from the memory of mankind. So the parchment was laid aside sadly and secretly, and passed into other hands, when a young historian, whose initials were the same as those of Gallus, — for the Carthaginian made his C and his G alike, — possessed himself of the parchment. His soul revolted within him as he read the wonderful words that lamented the loss of liberty which had once been the glory of Rome. So it was that this young historian, Cremutius Cordus, dared to praise the Romans of the Republic. And then another Emperor sent forth another edict; and by order of the Senate the historian's life-work was burned with fire.

The poem on the parchment, which had lured him on to his own ruin, now pointed out the only path of escape. He shunned the public gaze, refused all food, and died, clutching the parchment, whereon, as if to emphasize their kindred fates, he had inscribed his own name over that of the poet, so that the two initials served for both, and one might read indifferently

CREMUTIUS CORDUS
CORNELIUS GALLUS

Now the parchment was alive, for the curse of the Thcssalian witch was still over it; and, moreover, the poem written on it was immortal; and then, death is only a change from one state

to another, and the parchment had not changed as yet. It could not but feel, however, the potency of the spell. It recalled the words of MythymbaJ and shuddered at their ominous power, when the friends of the dead man, after reading the parchment, one by one, dropped it, one by one, on the marble floor as if they were handling death itself — and such was the fact. So it was with a feeling of relief that the parchment felt itself picked up and secreted in the cover of a vase, by the last man who lingered there; and he too looked around fearfully, lest someone see the deed and accuse him of treason to the Emperor.

A soft light filtered through the vase, — for it was of alabaster, — lighting up the parchment but telling no tale of what was going on in the world outside. There it reposed peacefully for over a thousand years, when Pope Innocent, into whose hands the vase had passed, bestowed it on the man who had placed him on the throne of St. Peter. So our parchment had now come to live in the Monastery of Clairvaux. When the Abbot Bernard removed the cover of the vase, he found the parchment, for it had been shaken down from its long concealment by the journey. He placed it in the monastic library; and some days later a novice craved permission to read it, scratching his ear like a dog as he did so — for was it not a profane manuscript?

Once again, the parchment felt itself in the hands of a young man to whom it might make instant appeal. It sang to him of the love of woman, of the breath of battle, of the thrill of glory, of the littleness of death. So that very night he fled the monastery, doffed his cowl, donned his armor, and fell fighting for Louis of France against Thomas de Marl of Couci. His body was brought back to Clairvaux, and over his heart was bound the fatal parchment, which longed to renew those peaceful centuries in the alabaster vase, for it regretted that its silent words could lure men on to destruction.

The Abbot bowed his head in pity over the backsliding novice, and breathed a prayer for the welfare of his soul. Taking the fatal parchment, he bade the librarian erase the profane song and inscribe thereon the hymn of Peter Abelard on the joys of Heaven. Accordingly a scribe scraped the parchment to a palimpsest. He spared the two beautiful initials painted by the Carthaginian; but so deeply had the firm hand of Gallus etched the lines of his verses, and so crisply had the pen of Cordus cut his own name and reinforced that of the poet, that, for all the scribe's scraping, there they remained, eloquent to the discerning touch though the eye no longer descried them.

It was a soul-sickening experience for the parchment, but it sought comfort in reflecting on the mortifications of the monks and the glory and peace of the new life. The scribe, who had scraped away the words, read them as he scraped, and shed tears of regret at his deed. Then he illuminated the beautiful initials with crimson and azure, and expanded them into the words 'Concilium Caelestium,' which means an assembly of the Inhabitants of Heaven. He wrote the hymn of Peter Abelard in letters of gold, and on either side he painted an angel pointing a ringer at the place where the erased lines stood. Each angel had a silver trumpet, and blew a blast thereon that seemed rather to glorify the battles of earth than the joyful peace of Heaven.

The parchment had undergone a change and had now become a palimpsest which, in spite of its grand sound, merely means scraped again; and yet it means more than that: it means something that always lies hidden in the human heart — the hope of resurrection. So it forgot the past, and having put on the new man, indulged in a sort of ecstasy as monk after monk chanted its sacred words over and over, and prayers and tears fell fast upon its golden letters.

At last, it was flung into a dark corner, and slumbered on another hundred years or so, till once again the waves of war arose and rolled over the peaceful valley. Then the palimpsest disappeared for a season, and was next seen in the steel cap of a foot-soldier in the streets of Louvain. Down he went, and round he spun in the mud and blood of an inglorious street brawl. The tavern-keeper picked up the palimpsest and, to keep peace with the authorities, presented it to the University library. It was good to rest once more in the company of manuscripts and books, and to listen to the talk, not of monks, but of scholars. They, however, paid scant respect to the hymn of Peter Abelard, for the palimpsest was now catalogued as 'a late forgery of the sixteenth century,' though it was fairly curling to tell them all how it had witnessed the murder of Julius Caesar and gazed at the galley of Cleopatra.

So there it reposed in dignified silence, till once again the world shook with the thunders of war, and a German soldier looted the palimpsest from the Louvain library, and sang the hymn of Peter Abelard to a wonderful profane tune, as he marched off with his companions. Such a thrill went through the palimpsest at the ring of his voice, that it felt once more as if marching with the Roman legions to battle.

Then, one bright morning, there came a low humming whistle and — the German soldier dropped like a slaughtered steer in the mud and water, and he lay there far into the night.

'Kamerad!' Whose was the voice?

The German, who was lying on his back singing as he gazed at the stars, tried to look around, but he could- only move his arm.

'Sing,' he said in good English, 'and I'1l tell you who you are.'

The American, who had studied under the German soldier at the conservatory at Berlin, answered, —

'I have not my voice with me; my voice is a violin; but I knew yours.'

'You are my pupil,' cried the German; 'I hope you pull through this accursed war. You must not die; you have a future before you.'

Men do not dwell on their differences when they meet in the valley of the shadow.

'Those were glad days,' said the American, drawing nearer.

'Yes, those were glad days,' repeated the German mechanically; 'here 's a souvenir of them.' And he handed the American the palimpsest, which had a hole in it now. Then he sang the opening line of the hymn of Peter Abelard, not to the first wild tune, but to a sad solemn air — sang the opening line, but no more; and the American knelt over him till the glazed eyes had ceased to reflect the stars.

Rising to his feet, he tucked the palimpsest into his pocket, when, snip — and he went down, to wake in the hospital back of the lines. Before he returned to the front, he sent the palimpsest back to America, to his old Latin teacher, who was a professor in a great university. It journeyed across the ocean in the custody of a friend, who showed the bullet-hole and the blood-spots that had blotted out the library number and the words, 'A late forgery of the sixteenth century.' This was some consolation; for it is better to have no character than a bad character, when one goes on a journey.

The professor was writing an article on Cornelius Gallus, and had formu

lated a theory about his falling into disgrace with fortune and in the ej'es of the Emperor — a theory that was confirmed minutely by the elegy, which, of course, he did not see. So, when the palimpsest stood on his table against his Latin lexicon, it certainly had some precious knowledge to impart — and the angels pointed with their fingers and blew their silver trumpets, to tell him that here, at last, was an elegy of the long-lost poet about whom he was writing. The unhappy man did not heed them, as often happens when our good angels do their best for us; and so for the moment he missed immortality.

Next, a young girl picked up the palimpsest and sat looking at it, pale as ashes, waiting for the professor. She was a pupil of his, and held a letter in her hand that told of an exploded mine and how someone she knew was led back to the lines with a handkerchief over what had once been his eyes. She glanced at the hymn of Peter Abelard and dropped the palimpsest, for she would not be comforted. When the professor read the letter, he almost broke down; for he was an old man and loved his pupils exceedingly. The girl had come to him for a position. She was to be the bread-winner now.

Months passed, and there came to the home of the professor a soldier from overseas, whose face wore the blank resigned look habitual with the blind. Nervously he fingered the objects on the table, when, suddenly, the tips of his fingers began to run over the palimpsest and his white face flushed. He had learned braille in the hospital, and he was reading the palimpsest, reading the lines etched in its surface by the Roman poet two thousand years before. He was waiting for the woman who was to marry him, and waiting for his violin, with which he was to support her if she would marry him. He was listening for her so intently, that he did not realize what he was doing, though he was stirred to his very soul by the silent melody of the verse. Yes, the palimpsest with its song of death was still alive, after twenty silent centuries. Again and again he went over the lines mechanically; and, fumbling with a pencil, he wrote the last distich on the deskblotter; and all the time he was listening, listening — would she never come?

There was a step in the hall, a click at the latch, and they met. For weeks she had planned to be natural, just as if nothing had happened, forgetting that he could not see if she were natural or not. And he — he, poor fellow, had planned to set her free, and then go his own way: the way the fatal palimpsest had pointed out, the way his own heart had pointed out in the first desperate days of his darkness. But love ordered otherwise. So there they sat and whispered together, till the deepening twilight made her darkness one with his.

Then she brought him his violin, and he stood there playing in the night, and the music filled the room, swelling and floating out into the city street. The air was filled with dreams — dreams of the cold night-watches when the icy stars looked down on the motionless dead and the thin moon fled from the dawn; dreams of the thundering of the guns and the wailing of the spirits passing from pain to peace. Next, a soft rippling melody reechoed the elegy of Gallus. Rome, exile, victory, swept across the strings. Then he thrust the violin under his arm and, taking the girl's hand, went forth into the street.

The old professor watched them through his window. He had failed to get his pupil a position, and he realized that it would not be needed now. Later, he discovered the lines written on his blotter and, dear honest-hearted

soul that he was, he thought that he had written them himself; so he ventured to print them in his article, to suggest what Gallus might have done! But his associates demonstrated in innumerable articles that the beautiful lines were ugly, and that Cornelius Gallus could never have written what Cornelius Gallus wrote. The tune will come when the old professor will be vindicated; but, of course, that will be when he is dead and knows nothing about it.

Neither did he know, as he sat there busily plying his pen, that some day the parchment on his desk would disclose a great secret, and that rival scholars would contend as to whether Cornelius Gallus or Cremutius Cordus wrote the elegy found under their joined names; or whether both wrote it — or neither; and, finally, whether he, the professor, had not himself forged it! Yes, the spell of the Thessalian witch is still potent; for nearly everybody who touches the parchment becomes blind in one way or another — even the old professor in his simple truthfulness is not proof against the spell; even he is fated to be caught in the web of an insoluble literary problem; and so he will not miss the bauble called immortality, in the end.

And in the meantime? Yes, in the meantime, the angels blow on their silver trumpets with might and main, to announce their secret to the world, and point with telltale finger to the wonderful words that lurk unseen in the palimpsest, until a sightless soldier shall hush his violin for a moment and run over the syllables again; for, after all, as the old professor writes in his article, men do not read with the eyes alone, but with the heart; and if only that be true, our lives may be fraught with music and our spiritual eyes grow bright, even though our mortal eyes be stricken blind.